VHPA
War Story Contest
Announcement
Do you remember the joke, “What is the difference between a fairy tale
and a war story?” The answer was, “The fairy tale starts out with ‘Once
upon a time’ while the war story starts out with ‘This ain’t no sh_t!’”
This note announces that we are organizing the first ever VHPA War Story
Contest, which we affectionately titled, The
This Ain’t no Sh_t Ultimate Vietnam War Story Contest! If
you enjoy telling war stories about your Vietnam era exploits and experiences
that are entertaining, informative, audience appropriate, and hopefully
factual, then we invite you to sign up for this event.
Since this is the first time we are organizing the war
story event at a VHPA reunion, we will be flexible about how it comes off, but
here’s how we envision it at this point. First,
sign up for the contest by sending an e-mail or calling Doug Womack (dmfwomack@yahoo.com, 410.827.8720) or Jim Fulbrook (jfulbrook@cox.net, 703.385.2999).
The deadline to sign up this way is 28
February 2006. When you contact
us, provide your name, a short title of the war story, and provide your contact
information so we can get in touch with you to coordinate the event.
We must have this information by 2/28/2006
to schedule a room and announce the event.
We may provide a way to sign up electronically on the VHPA website when
you register for the reunion but that’s TBD.
Plan on having about 15 minutes (give or take) to tell your war story.
Then we will schedule a contest session where you and other members will
tell their stories. Anyone
registered for the reunion will be able to attend for free.
We’ll even videotape your story for our oral history archive.
After everyone has presented, we will give out awards, which will consist
of official-looking certificates (suitable for framing) that acknowledge your
participation and recognition as the best war story, the most interesting, the
most unbelievable, the most nostalgic (heart-warming), the funniest war story,
the most heroic, etc. at the VHPA reunion – you get the idea.
Everyone will be a winner as long as their story is generally
entertaining, informative, audience appropriate and somewhat believable as we
stated above.
You could get the hook though if you are a rowdy or
blowhard and get out-of-hand. This
is meant to be a fun time and open to everyone.
Let’s face it; all of your family and mini-reunion friends already
heard your war story 20 times, so why not share it with other members.
Oh yes, there is a condition – some time during your talk you must knit
in the words “This ain’t no sh_t!” so we know what you are telling us is
true down to the last detail and not some fairy tale!
We will schedule the war story contest at a day and time
that does not conflict with other events. Time
permitting; we may take impromptu story tellers.
We have no idea how many members will sign up or how many members will
show up, but if this event is successful, we will offer it at future reunions.
We know there are lots of great story tellers out there, so sign up and
share your favorite war story with us and a great time will be had by all –
and “that ain’t no sh_t!” Remember,
the deadline to contact us is 28 February
2006.
